Page 210 of Corrupting Camille
“Thought you might need a moment,” Rosa says softly.
I glance over my shoulder.
She’s carrying two drinks one wine, one water. She hands me the water without asking which I want. Somehow, she just knows.
“Thank you,” I murmur, taking it.
We stand in silence for a while.
The kind that doesn’t press.
The kind that waits for you to fill it on your own terms.
“I don’t really know how to be here,” I admit quietly. “In this world. With all of this.”
Rosa smiles faintly, not unkind. “Neither did I.”
That surprises me. I turn fully to look at her. “You?”
She nods, her gold earrings catching the light. “I was Twenty-five. Raised in a quiet home. My father was a tailor. My mother taught piano. I didn’t even know what a gun sounded like until Diego.”
I blink. “And now?”
Her expression softens, deepens. “Now I know what it means to love someone who moves through the dark. Who lives with blood on his hands and a code in his bones. It’s not easy, mija. It doesn’t get easier. But it gets clearer.”
I swallow, my throat tight. “What if I’m not built for it?”
Rosa steps closer, her hand brushing my curls gently off my shoulder. “You are. Not because you’re hard. But because you’renot. You make him softer. You make him human. And men like Kane?” She pauses. “They need a reason to stay tethered to this world.”
I look down at the stone beneath my bare feet. “And if I get lost in his shadows instead?”
“Then you come find me,” she says simply. “Or Reina. Or Marisol. You’re not alone anymore. That’s what being part of this family means.”
Family.
The word lands differently here. Heavier.
Wider.
Not just blood and birthright, but survival. Shared silence. Women who know how to smile through the weight of what their men carry.
I close my eyes, just for a second, and let myself feel it.
Not fear.
Not confusion.
Just... belonging.
“I never thought I’d have this,” I say softly. “Not after what I’ve lost.”
Rosa doesn’t ask what that means. She doesn’t need to. She just reaches out and cups my cheek in her warm, callused palm.
“You do now,” she says gently. “And I think you knew that the second you got out of that car holding his hand.”
My eyes sting.
I nod.
